


Episteme

by scarlett_the_seachild



Category: The Iliad - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarlett_the_seachild/pseuds/scarlett_the_seachild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is times like these that you are not sure whether you admire him or whether you are repulsed by him.</p><p>The incident that leads to the whole Achilles/Pat relationship. All from my twisted, absent mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Episteme

There is a knife in his hand and in the other he holds a dead snake. Its eyes, unseeing as they are, watch you approach and he looks up and grins.

“It was fast,” he explains. “I was faster.”

It is times like these that you are not sure whether you admire him or whether you are repulsed by him. Black blood squeezes through the cracks of his clenched fist, oozing like a handful of crushed grapes from between his knuckles. The dead snake dangles stupidly by his side, its tiny head bouncing against the scuffed marble of his thigh. A trickle runs down his leg from his knee and it is ruby red, like him.

“You’re hurt,” you say and he looks down confusedly, as if the cut hadn’t existed before you’d mentioned it.

“It’s not bad,” he starts but you’re already beside him, down on one knee like a praying man and fumbling with salves and bandages. You’ve learnt to carry them around with you; if anything happens to him it will be you who bares the blame and he so likes sharp objects. You dress the graze and wipe his blood away and it clings to you, bright and so impossibly red that everything else seems washed out; the sky, the trees, the red-brown earth, none of it as real as the three drops wiped across your fingertips.

He watches you as you wrap the linen once, twice, three times around him and his face doesn’t change when your fingers brush against the back of his knee and your knuckles meet the soft flesh there, the sinews yet to harden with practice and age. His gaze is steady and his expression betrays nothing and you cannot stop yourself from planting a kiss on the patch of bare thigh just above the wound, if only to provoke some sort of reaction.

He is warm and his skin is faintly rosy from the sun. Your lips are on him and suddenly you feel his hand in your hair, stroking the blushing skin on the back of your neck and letting dark locks slide through his fingers. Your head falls back, revealing the startling whiteness of your throat and you close your eyes, revelling in the lightness of his fingers against your neck, your throat, your collar bone, winding down to the flat plane of your chest. And for a moment you allow yourself to pretend that he is kissing you and that his hands will slide beneath your chiton to brush over your stomach; that his lips, pink and soft like a girl’s will follow to suck gently at the supple skin of your abdomen to wander down to the hardness nudging against your thigh…

You open one eye. He is still holding the snake.

“Did it hurt you?” you whisper. If he nods you will kill it again.

He shakes his head. “No.”

Its tiny head dangles stupidly at his side, its eyes are black and one hangs loosely from its socket. It is pathetic, and yet, it looks to be laughing at you. “You didn’t have to kill it.”

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at the thing in his hand, limp and laughing and then back at you. “Should I burn it?”

You look at the dead snake with its broken body. You look at the black blood streaking his right fist. You look at the knife. You look at him. “No,” you say. “It’s gone now. Leave it.”

For a moment he looks confused. Then he drops the thing and it falls into the dirt with a light thump. He looks around, as if to check that no one is watching, he bends down and he kisses you lightly on the lips, like the brush of a feather.

He is fourteen and you are sixteen. It is your first kiss.


End file.
